2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Media?

The QSR industry in the region is extremely cluttered and constantly bombarded with new players, online aggregators and highly competitive offers. For KFC in the Gulf, the last five years had been challenging. Sales and budgets were decreasing. By the beginning of 2017, we knew that growth will not come without us transforming and disrupting the way we approach media. We knew that the solution would be found under the pile of data we had always been collecting sporadically and in silos.

Background.

Our approach was clear: collect, analyze and activate data to drive brand and business performance. By following the data, we prioritized audiences and their habits not media channels. Every simulation we worked on was based on a marketing hypothesis that we then went to market with and tested various media configurations and quickly evaluated the response on business. Our analysis was extremely granular to the point where we started to understand what OOH format worked for which product in which city. Or what time to blast digital media for which product. And many other simulations that have now made our decision making more accurate and accountable across all teams.

Describe the creative idea/insights

The idea was overdue and transformative to our business. We went out to build a data driven platform that can help us collect, analyze and activate all our data to help us better understand what consumers loved about us and how we can best cater to them. We wanted to reduce ambiguity in our decision making and disrupting the way we went to market with our product bundles and distribution channels. The essence of what we have build is now currently evolving into a close to real time predictive marketing business model.

Describe the strategy.

Our strategic objective was to reduce advertising wastage by becoming data driven and begin the journey to having more relevant and personalized marketing with our customers. To do this, we housed all our store level sales data, call center data, media data, website data and market level brand metrics into one place and started to uncover both consumer insights and market level insights. We then began to test various hypothesis in market by launching different campaign mixes and quickly evaluating the response until we came to a working test and learn model that yielded the best results.

Describe the execution.

With a robust model defining our offline/online media investment and with more accountability on offline, we upgraded our audience approach on addressable media. First, we deployed a proper tech stack, after auditing the brands digital architecture. Second, we ran a detailed media mix model across historical sales data to better understand media’s impact on business performance. Then we ensured that we were collecting our data correctly and harmonized it with GA360. Our approach granted us deeper insight into our consumer journey, helping us optimize our product bundles, understand product performance on a local level and react quickly. This helped us move away from a last-click model and become data-driven. Our framework revolved around optimizing best performing strategies. We used various targeting techniques, based on brand affinity, interest, location and behavioral. This allowed us to identify relevant audiences, minimize waste, create lookalikes, and then retarget all our segments with precision.

List the results.

Our primary objective was increasing sales for KFC, with a sales growth of 2% specifically. The sales growth increased to 10% in 2018. This meant we over achieved our objective by 400%. We are also seeing a 15% month-on-month increase in revenue. On digital specifically, we reduced the Cost per Order by 94%. Aside from our business objectives, we are also seeing an overall impact on the KFC brand: • Brand perception metrics improved by 18% • Our ROI is only steadily increasing. Through econometrics modelling we’ve witnessed an increase: 9.5 (2018) vs 7.15 (2017) • Drop in cost per transactions attributed to media by 35% from 1st campaign and last campaign • 45% less media spends then the main competitor, 55% higher ad awareness On the whole, consideration for the brand and revenue has increased, proving the effectiveness of putting data at the heart of any marketing strategy.